MONSTER MAGNET Mainman: 'I Never Stopped Touring, So My Perception Of Time Is Really Weird'

Joe Daly of The Weeklings recently conducted an interview with MONSTER MAGNET mainman Dave Wyndorf. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

The Weeklings: Since you broke out in the late '80s, you've survived grunge, the destruction of the old music industry, a shitload of lineup changes, and you yourself have survived some close calls. How have you survived?

Wyndorf: Just duck. Know when to duck. The perception of time gets kind of skewed when you're in a band, because you're always working and traveling all the time. I never stopped touring, so my perception of time is really weird. I could easily go ten years and then look back and go, "Man, that was a tough six months!" Look at yourself in the mirror, man! It's been ten years. What have you been doing? Getting laid and traveling takes up a lot of time, and that's what I did for ten or twelve years. As soon as you get home, you realize that the whole thing is not real. You're not happy with the music that's on the radio, but there's no place for MONSTER MAGNET. In my head, we'd be on the charts with ten other bands that were like DAVID BOWIE, or that were as cool as HAWKWIND, or as cool as THE STOOGES. That was the world I wanted to live in, but I realized that was my childhood. It ain't gonna happen. Now I'm up there with PEARL JAM. That's what I get. The bands that I like, they got to play with THE STOOGES and HAWKWIND, I get to play with fucking PEARL JAM! That's not cool. Nothing against PEARL JAM, but you know what I mean?

The Weeklings: What was your goal for the new album ["The Last Patrol"]?

Wyndorf: I really didn't want to fuck around. I made a big mistake on the last one by not taking enough time to do it. I discovered the hard way that just because I can write an album in a short amount of time doesn't mean that I should produce it in a short amount of time. Anybody who listens to the last one and then this one will notice that on the new one, there's a lot more attention paid to the parts. One of the dangers of modern technology is that you can have Pro Tools and you can clean stuff up. Nothing against computers or Pro Tools, but they can be abused, and it was abused on that album, so I was like, fuck that, I'm going to do a whole psychedelic record with just the stuff that I got started on with "Mastermind", and that's all it's going to be. Also, I didn't feel like writing a record with the fist-in-the-air rock anthem on it. I'm too old for that shit. "Come on, everybody, let's rock!" Now, , "How about you rock, because I'm too tired to rock!" [laughs] I'm not going to say, "All you people, jump up and down, while I sit on a chair and have a cigarette." The new album is one of things with a psychedelic rock vibe, atmosphere, weirdness, ambiguity… that's what's important to me now.

The Weeklings: So what's the plan for the album and beyond?

Wyndorf: Well, the plan is the same as usual, to beat the living shit out of it on the road, except this time we're actually going to go in the States. Album comes out [October] 15th and then we hit the States and do the first full tour we've done there in ten years, and then we go to Europe and do the usual, which is play the living fuck out of it. We got to Europe like two or three times a year, for four and five weeks at a time, and then Australia. Anywhere else in the world that's buying. It's quite a busy world out there. I made the decision to ignore the States about ten years ago. Knocking on the door in the States is tough. If they're not buying what you have to sell, you could easily go broke. Or you could be a smart human and go to Europe and drink tiny cups of coffee and stay in nice hotels and rock the way God intended.

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